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Trans-Nationalizing the African Public Sphere: What Role for Trans-Border Languages?

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Trans-Nationalizing the African Public Sphere: What Role for Trans-Border Languages? Africa Development, Vol. XXXV, Nos 1 & 2, 2010, pp. 55 – 70 © Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa, 2010 (ISSN 0850-3907) Trans-nationalizing the African Public Sphere: What Role for Trans-border Languages? Maimouna Barro* Abstract At a time when the notion of ‘trans-national public spheres’ is gaining more and more currency in academic circles, the role played by languages, and trans-border languages in particular, cannot be ignored in our attempts to rethink the African public sphere. In the African context, language has been a major factor in determining cultural and ethnic identity among various groups, whether they live within the same nation-state or are territorially dispersed. This situation problematizes the idea of a Westphalian citizenry resident in a national territory, and challenges the assumption that lan- guages map onto states. This paper focuses on the Fulfulde language – a trans-border language spoken across several national boundaries in West Africa – and assesses ways in which trans-border languages contribute to the emergence of a transnational public sphere in Africa. Résumé À une époque où la notion de « sphères publiques trans-nationales » se répand de plus en plus dans les milieux universitaires, le rôle joué par les langues en général et les langues transfrontalières en particulier ne peut être ignoré dans nos efforts pour repenser la sphère publique africaine. Dans le contexte africain, la langue a été un facteur important dans la détermination de l’identité culturelle et ethnique au sein de différents groupes, qu’ils vivent au sein de le même État-nation ou qu’ils soient éparpillés sur des territoires. Cette situation rend problématique l’idée d’une citoyenneté westphalienne résidant sur un territoire national, et conteste l’hypothèse que les langues correspondent plus aux États. Ce document met l’accent sur la langue fulfulde -une langue transfrontalière parlée à travers plusieurs frontières nationales en Afrique de l’Ouest- et évalue les moyens par lesquels les langues transfrontalières contribuent à l’émergence d’une sphère publique transnationale en Afrique. * Center for African Studies, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA. Email: [email protected] 3-Barro.pmd 55 09/03/2011, 11:19 56 Africa Development, Vol. XXXV, Nos 1 & 2, 2010 Introduction The public sphere as conceptualized by Jurgën Habermas rested on several institutional presuppositions that were all implicitly Westphalian. One of Habermas’s presuppositions regarding the public sphere was that of a single national language which, in his view, was supposed to be the linguistic me- dium of the public sphere and public communication. This perspective problematizes the notion of a democratic public sphere in Africa where Afri- can societies are for the most part multi-linguistic. In addition, during most of the post-independence era, there has been very minimal progress in the promotion of indigenous African languages, the languages of African masses, whereas colonial languages continue to have the status of official languages and remain the primarily tools of communication in public institutions. How- ever, despite the fact that the local African languages have been put on the backburner by both colonial and post-colonial governments for a long time, they continue to play a vital role in the lives of African communities both within and beyond their national boundaries. At a time when several African countries are witnessing an increasing democratization of political structures and when there has been notable progress and growth in independent and pluralistic media, debate about the public sphere and public opinion in Africa is gaining a special resonance in academic circles. The rapid development of mass media in Africa characterized by a pluralistic media and participatory forms of dialogue and expression gives voice to marginalized and isolated communities in both national and transnational public spheres. However, the public sphere is by no means new to Africa. Examples from various ethnic groups in Africa suggest that, traditionally, there existed a public opinion that limited the power of the political elite, which was indeed comparable to Habermas’s concept of a coffee- house culture of eighteenth-century England. Even though social categories such as elders, men and members of the nobility enjoyed privilege in public debate, groups all along the social ladder were also given some space to voice their opinions on matters pertaining to their communities’ public life. Public entities such as the Battu Futankoobe (General Assembly of Pulaar People) among the Pulaar people of Fuuta-Tooro along the Senegal River Valley, or the Pencu Lebu (General Assembly of Lebu People) among the Lebu people in the Cap-vert region in Senegal both suggest that participatory forms of dialogue in the public space existed. In our day and age, the core feature of the modern public sphere is a common and publicly accessible space such as a marketplace, pub, newspaper, radio, television or internet, which serves the purpose of framing public opinion. This paper is premised on the assumption that whatever form 3-Barro.pmd 56 09/03/2011, 11:19 Barro: Trans-nationalizing the African Public Sphere 57 of communication is used in order to frame public opinion, the language or languages of the public sphere, whether in print or in oral form, constitute a key element in our efforts to rethink the public sphere. The public sphere constitutes a key element in any society that calls itself democratic. Public debate in a public space can only occur when there exists a free exchange of information and ideas, when citizens can voice their opinions on issues of public concern and are able to transmit their public will to official authorities, and when they have the means to influence decision-making. There is little doubt that the continued status of colonial languages as official languages in most of Africa – a legacy of colonialism that independent African governments carried on – constitutes a major obstacle in attempts to create a democratic public sphere. However, language has always played an important role in defining group identity. Tocqueville, in Democracy in America, argues that ‘language is perhaps the most enduring link which unites man’. It is true that a common language has not always translated into group cohesion and cooperation, but evidence from several places in the African continent suggests that even groups that were arbitrarily partitioned by colonial boundaries are often brought together by their common linguistic, ethnic, and cultural bonds. Deeming language ‘the element of culture par excellence’ Chumbow (2005) regards a common language as an instrument for bringing people together and for achieving peace and harmony between nations in Africa, and argues that trans-border languages have a major role to play in achieving pan-African ideals and the goals of continental unity. Chumbow states: Despite the disruptive effect of arbitrary boundaries on the cultural and ethnic unity of partitioned peoples, however, they quite often cultivate and reinforce pre-partition networks of intra-group or intra-ethnic relations and in some cases (at least historically) they consider the boundary as binding only on the colonial powers or present-day governments and not on their own internal relations with their kith and kin, which they consider ‘inviolable’ (p.183). This paper focuses on the Fulfulde language, a transnational African lan- guage spoken in roughly fourteen countries throughout the Sahel region of West Africa to the borders of Eastern Sudan. The first part of the paper demonstrates the existence of a transnational Fulfulde cultural heritage, very apparent in the concept of Pulaagu. It then traces the birth of the Pulaar literacy movement in Senegal and Mauritania, and examines the socio-his- torical and political contexts that contributed to its development. It examines the ways in which the movement around the Pulaar language, a movement whose beginnings started outside the borders of Senegal and Mauritania, has been used to influence social structures and political institutions at home in 3-Barro.pmd 57 09/03/2011, 11:19 58 Africa Development, Vol. XXXV, Nos 1 & 2, 2010 both countries, especially in Mauritania where literacy in Pulaar was the medium through which Pulaar populations voiced their dissatisfaction with a racist political regime and its policies of ‘arabization’. The last part of the paper looks at the emergence of a global Fulfulde civil society, which is increas- ingly becoming a forum for real issues affecting Fulfulde communities. In this paper, the terms ‘Fulfulde language’ and ‘Fulbe people’ will be used, respectively, to refer to the language and its people throughout the West African region and beyond, while the terms Pulaar language and Pulaar peo- ple refer specifically to the language and its speakers in Senegal and Mauri- tania , the region known as Fuuta-Tooro. A Transnational Fulfulde Cultural Space To study a society, its traditions and its evolution, literature – whether writ- ten or oral – provides a good starting point. Fulfulde and its mutually intelli- gible dialects represent the language of roughly 25 million people across several national boundaries in West Central Africa. Over the centuries, Fulbe people migrated throughout the Sahel and Savannah regions of West Africa and evolved into many subgroups with a variety of designations correspond- ing to specific geographical zones where they were concentrated as Fulbe, Fellaata, Fulakunda, Gorgaabe, Haalpulaar, and Woodaabe, to name just a few. Presently, they live in communities throughout much of West and Cen- tral Africa – from Senegal to Cameroon – and are dispersed as far east as Sudan and Ethiopia. The Fulbe people are concentrated in six major west African regions where they historically had an impact, namely Adamawa (Cameroon), Kanem-Bornu (Chad), Masina (Mali), Fuuta-Jallon (Guinea), Fuuta-Tooro (Senegal and Mauritania) and Sokoto (Nigeria). There has been a long tradition of writing in Fulfulde in the above mentioned eighteenth and nineteenth centuries states, which were also major Islamic foyers.
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